Love those blooms so much, that you wish they’d last forever!? We’ve been there! We keep getting questions on fun things to do with your flower deliveries, especially with the Gulbaan Farmer’s boxes, so we’ve put together a DIY tutorial to help you get started in the art of drying flowers!
Here at Gulbaan, we like to keep it simple and fun, so we’ll take you through how we dried the flowers for this post, and also share a few other techniques that are sure to work! Who’s ready to dry some flowers!?
The Gulbaan Way
What you need:
- Flowers*, of course! The Gulbaan Farmer’s Box is a great cost effective way to get a wide variety of the blooms you need, or you can choose any of our bouquets/arrangements to get started!
- A sharp pair of scissors
- Butter paper (there’s always some included with our farmer’s boxes!)
- A thick stack of books
*We used Sunflowers, Chrysanthemums, Statice, Chinese Asters and some Gypsophila as week as some Rose petals!
The Process:
- Invert the flowers and cut off their stems and any rotting leaves.
- Open up one of the books, place a piece of butter paper on the book (Make sure the butter paper is larger than the book so the book remains safe!).
- Place the flowers on top of the butter paper. Cover the flower with another piece of butter paper and close the book.
- To add weights to the flowers, place two or three more heavy books on top.
- Leave the books in a dry room for 2-3 days. You’ll know the drying is done when the flowers feel like paper when touched.
Pro tip: Separate the petals from the bud when drying sunflowers. This is useful since the petals and the bud are of different thickness. Separation will help the petals dry while preserving their color, instead of giving off a brown, rotten shade. If you love sunflowers, check out one of our amazing sunflower arrangements here!
While we’re on the subject, there are some other great ways to dry flowers! Here are some other tried and trusted methods:
The Air-drying technique
This is a great and very traditional way to dry flowers for decoration, as it maintains the stems to a certain degree. Here’s how to do it!
What you need:
- Unflavored dental floss
- Hangers
- Unscented hairspray
The Process:
- Cut and remove excess leaves from the flower stem. You can also shorten the length of the stem but make sure its no less than 6 inches.
- Use a rubber band to bring stems together in a bunch, or you can hang individual stems as well.
- To ensure the processes is success, find a dry room away from direct sunlight. (This is important as dried flowers lose their color when exposed to sunlight or extreme heat for long time periods). A dark room is preferable!
- Use the dental floss to tie the flower stems to the hangers to suspend them. The stems have to be hung upside down to allow the petals to maintain their upright posture.
- Allow the flowers to dry for two to three weeks.
- Once completely dried up, remove the flowers from their hanging positions and spray with unscented hairspray to keep the petals protected.
Note: This technique should be used for flowers such as roses, statice and sunflowers, as these can withstand the long and harsh conditions this technique requires. If you’re looking for a lovely bunch of roses to try this on, we recommend this!
The Microwave technique
This is a simple and quick method, but only works with a select variety of roses. Again, this is good if you aren’t too concerned about preserving the stems! For the fresh flowers that can be delivered in Lahore to your doorstep, this technique works well with Chrysanthemums, roses and sunflowers.
What you need:
- Microwave container with lid
- Microwave
- Silica gel
- Scissors
- Fine tip brush
- Acrylic spray
- Gloves (optional)
The Process:
- Find a microwave safe container to hold your flowers. (Note: DO NOT use this container again for heating any eatables).
- Line the bottom of the container with silica gel (you can purchase this from any crafts store). Place the flowers blossoming up in the gel, and top the petals with more gel. Avoid flattening the petals by pouring gently, or using your hands.
- Place the container uncovered in the microwave. The amount of time in the microwave depends on the flower being dried, therefore a bit of trial and error will take place on this step. Note: Roses can withstand more heat, while chrysanthemums are best dried at lower temperatures.
- Start the microwave and check the flowers progress every 30 seconds. Adjust according to the flowers need. Keep a careful watch to avoid any burns to the petals.
- Once the flowers have dried, immediately cover the container.
- Remove the covered container from the microwave, uncover the container only slightly (Do not uncover completely). Let it sit for 24 hours.
- Clean the gel from the petals with a fine tip brush (available at any crafts store). Spray the dried petals with a mist of acrylic spray. This will add shine to the flowers and help preserve them.
- Display your dried flowers in epoxy resins, in photo frames or anyway you like!
We hope you have a great time trying these techniques on your flower deliveries. We would love to know how your experience went! Please share it with us using Instagram with our hashtag #gulbaan – we’d love to know about which techniques you tried and how your experiences turned out.
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